Short Story - JJ's Note (Part 1)

It seems that granny's heart was broken by a poetic locomotive driver from Aberystwyth.

I only found this out on the day of her funeral, at the gathering afterward.

Mother drew me apart from the other guests. We stood silently for a while, watching them lose salad out of their triangular sandwiches, then she told me all about it.

His name was JJ, apparently. He had first seen my granny as she waited for her train home from work one cold evening, November 1952. Although, for him, it was love at first sight, it was eighteen months before he finally got up the nerve to speak to her.

She was in Holland Park fingering Yeats. JJ sat down beside her and read a verse he had written in her honour. It was a lot closer to doggerel than poetry but granny nonetheless was very taken by it and by the gentle, soft spoken man who recited it. An affair began within weeks.

"Did granddad know?" I asked.

We both looked over to where he sat, slippered, tartan-blanketed, unaware. Since the stroke, he spent most of his time in the company of colleagues who had died many years before. In his rasping voice, he frequently carried on conversations with them - never with us.

"Father knew nothing darling", my mother said, "and cared less."

Granddad, a successful architect, was considerably older than granny when they wed. The passing years, coupled with her rapidly-failing eyesight, did little to reduce this gap.

By the time she met JJ, granddad had retired from his practice and spent most of his time locked in his study constructing elaborate cryptic crossword puzzles on huge sheets of tracing paper.

Granny, fighting her disability angrily, returned to work late in life and, at fifty, proved she was as good a personal secretary as any of her fully sighted work mates.

"At the time, she worked for the chief planner of some local council. Buckinghamshire, or someplace like that. This was against daddy's express wishes. Inevitably, the void between them grew greater by the day."

Mother paused.

"And then?" I prompted.

"Then JJ asked her to run away with him. They'd been seeing each other - you know what I mean, they'd been going out - only nine months."

Some distant cousin rolled up to us to offer final condolences before going home. I could hardly wait until he left.

"And you knew about all this?"

Mother smiled.

"I was her eyes. I read her his poetry, made excuses for her. She deserved him, he was a good man."

"So what happened. No, don't tell me, he ditched her, right?"

"No, he did not 'ditch' her, Katie," mother winced at my crudity, "She hesitated, heavens knows why, perhaps she was thinking of father and me and how we would react. Whatever the reason, JJ saw at once that she wasn't sure. He wrote her one of his poems and then... well, you'd better read for yourself."

From her pocket mother produced a yellowed rectangle of sharply folded writing paper. She handed it to me. I opened it and read.

1I love you Faye so very muchI long for you, to feel your touch.I've asked you now to come with mebut something says that may not be.

I think you need some time to ponderso I will go off on a wanderand return to hear what you will say.At this same time a year today.

On the Glorious Twelfth I'll wait a whileand pray to see your loving smile.

2So if you love me there you'll bethen we will love eternallyIf you're not there to make our dateI'll know true love was not our fate

Then I'll trouble you no more sweet FayeBut I'll return on that same dayOn every year until I dieto see if you'll come by and by.

3Where shall we meet?I've not yet saidbut you will know'tis in your head

and if you don'tthen you will findold JJ by readingbetween the lines.

Yours always JJ

"There," my mother breathed, "what do you think?"

I laughed.

"Well...it's crap! It's just like something a child would write."

Mother didn't like that very much.

"Katie, come on! This was above mere iambic pentameter and imagery. This was honest, from the heart."

"Okay, sorry mum. So, JJ sailed away for a year and a day...then what?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"The story ends with that letter in your hand. It arrived in the post on the Twelfth of August 1953. I took it from the hall into the garden and I read it to your grandmother on the stone bench under the oak, you remember the one."

"Sure. How did she take it?"

"At first, she was furious, then she wept a little and then, oh then Katie - I've never seen such panic in a person's eyes, never! She made me read it all again, and again. She even tried to read it herself but her sight was really too far gone by that time. It was too awful!

"She didn't know, you see. She didn't understand where JJ planned to meet her the following year. The poem said that she would know if she read between the lines but she couldn't, you see, she was blind and no matter how many times I read it to her she couldn't work out where it was."

Jesus!

I read the note again.

"It was obviously someplace well known to both of them, mutual ground. Surely she could have worked through their favourite places?"

Mother nodded gently.

"Everything, we tried everything. The next August the twelfth I drove her to every place she and JJ had ever been together. We couldn't find him. She started to pine for him and went on pining for the rest of her life. Every 'Glorious Twelfth' we spent looking, desperately trying to claw back her one chance of happiness but it was all in vain. They never met again. It was her wish that you should have this letter."

She clasped my hand fervently.

"You've found love, Katie, don't ever squander it"

Mother tended to sound a bit theatrical when she got intense so I pleaded the bathroom and escaped. As I left, I saw Aunt Jessie move in to force a little comfort on her.

I slipped out of the room, stunned by mothers' revelations. Sweet old granny, involved in such a tragic cock-up.

It was beyond belief!

Let me know if you'd like to read the last bit of this. I'd be pleased to post it up next time if anyone is actually bothered where JJ was.

No, I'm not bothered what happens next...yeh, right...post it or be damned forever.That business about fingering Yeats though. That disturbed me a bit. He's been dead a while. Might you change that..?x

I suspect the answer is TOO obvious - I've tried the first letters of the sentences (ignoring the eyes ... wait! eyes = iii, hmmmm), tried counting spaces ... I'll be back to find out. Great story BTW!

'Me' Stuff

54 Years Old.
Loves to write.
Has had writing produced for radio, theatre, and film... some short stories published (and broadcast) and a laundry list which was highly commended by 'Whiter than White' in Castle Street.
'My Writing Resume'